The Terror Within: Can We Please Really Talk About the Whys Behind School Shootings?

I can’t stop thinking about Salvador’s one pair of jeans. 

Yes, I know that most kids who grow up poor, bullied and neglected don’t become murderers. 

But I still can’t stop wondering— were they stained from burger grease from work? Or from marker lines doodled on his knees during class? His father called them ‘high waters’— is that because Salvador grew straight and tall so fast, as young men do? Growing into a man’s body while stuck in boy-pants, with a boy’s mind and a boy’s sense of time but a man’s legal right to purchase an assault weapon. 

Maybe I can’t stop thinking about those jeans because I don’t want to think anymore about tiny bleeding bodies suppressing screams of pain and horror while playing dead. Because I’m looking for some key that will unravel where it began for Salvador— or for any one of the ones who’ve gone from being children to being monsters without a breath between. 

I know there is no key. There is no one thing that turns a child one day. There are so many things. 

And so, forgive me. I know there’s no defense for his horrific actions, for the loss of those precious lives. But I just can’t stop thinking about Salvador’s one pair of jeans, about his lanky boy-knees peeking through the threads, how they were surely skinned at some point, and how I don’t know if there was anyone there to kiss them when he did. 

I can’t help but wonder how many more Salvadors are out there now, growing tall in parched soil. I can’t help but think of all the tiny innocents alive now— laughing, playing make-believe, chasing fireflies into dusk as darkness waits to envelop them— and their parents watching from doorways praying they will grow strong enough to resist the examples our culture sets, or quick enough to leap from windows into a future that we desperately try to imagine is not what we know it to be.

Yes, I want us to address our addiction to guns. Yes, I want us to start talking about mental health. But I also want us to go deeper. I want us to examine the bootstrap colonial culture that brought us to this point. 

I want to talk about how Every. Single. Time, we learn there were signs of unraveling— but our youth are already so jaded by violence that they don’t take them seriously. Or they do— and are ignored by adults who either don’t want to see, or who are just as powerless themselves to do anything about it in such a broken system. 

I want to talk about those last years of school— that last window of time before society kicks them to the winds of fate and says ‘you’re on your own now.’ I want to talk about broken-hearted teachers who cry themselves to sleep at night knowing there are too many to save.

I want to talk about the fact that an entire generation has been unable to afford higher education and are worse off than their parents. I want to talk about impossible rent prices, gentrified neighborhoods, treeless concrete lots, and the alienation caused by not being able to afford a phone-bill in a world with fewer and fewer places to engage with the world in safe and healthy ways.

I want to talk about the fact that they’ve been raised during a patriotic ‘war on terror’ while racism, homophobia, and misogyny continue to run rampant in their own neighborhoods and the only way out is in a military uniform. I want to talk about climate disaster, poisoned air and water, and how children aren’t as able as adults to tolerate cognitive dissonance— they SEE what we’re doing to their futures. And if they don’t trust us to understand them, it’s for good reason. 

I want to talk about the brainwashing— not just by fake news and hate-group chat-rooms, but also by a culture of individualism that blames the poor for being poor, the sick for being sick, the troubled for being troubled. I want to talk about the soul-killing loneliness of capitalism, neglect as the abuse that it is, and why children feel the need to burn down their worlds to light their way as they walk into darkness alone. 

I want us to go deeper, to open our eyes so wide we become confused and overwhelmed with the obstacles. I want us to pull back the rug, look at all the ickiness that has gathered beneath, and begin to sweep away the cobwebs of neglect.

I want us to talk about Salvador’s one pair of jeans. His growing pains. The hatred that spread within him until there was no more room left inside for a child to remain. I want us to ask until we are blue in the face and our hearts break open: ‘What if? What if? What if?’